The DASH Diet for Weight Loss: Lose Weight and Keep It Off--the Healthy Way--with America's Most Respected Diet by Thomas J. MooreMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
The DASH Diet For Weight Loss by Thomas J Moore, MD is a top notch book on weight loss using the DASH Diet. DASH stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. The DASH Diet was originally created as a treatment for people with high blood pressure (hypertension). Through extensive scientific study, the original diet is also shown to help prevent heart disease, stroke and diabetes. DASH has also been ranked the number one diet by US News and World Report. This book takes the essential principals of the original DASH diet and assigns different calorie levels based on your current weight.
The books begins with an explanation of the basics of weight loss and determining your body mass index (BMI). From there you determine your calorie goal for optimal weight loss. Each of these things has an easy step by step approach with charts. They are very easy to use but are only able to give you an estimate of your actual numbers. If you want, or need, more accurate information, see a Registered Dietitian. Once you have determined your estimate of your calorie intake, you are given you calorie goal for weight loss and the number of servings in each DASH group. The groups insist of Vegetables, Fruits, Grains, Dairy, Meat/Fish/Poultry/Eggs, Nuts/Seeds/Legumes, Added Fats, and Sweets. The diet is heavy on Vegetables and Fruits, with moderate Grains and low on sweets and added fats. Once you have determined your number of servings, the book explains what a DASH serving is for each group in your calorie level.
A large portion of the book is about explaining how to incorporate this basic concept into you eating plan. The writing is very easy to understand and less confusing than most diet books especially when it comes to implementing the concepts into your lifestyle. Each section has space to write down your calorie goal and number of servings for each food group. This makes it much easier to remember what your DASH serving are instead of having to flip back to earlier in the book.
There is also a chapter on food tracking and exercise. The food tracking section is a basic food log that you can copy out of the book for your continued use. The physical activity chapter is quite helpful and detailed. Most of the suggestions are very doable and easy for a beginner to implement. The authors seem to understand that most people are not athletes and have no desire to become one.
The book also includes chapters on creating realistic goals, using visualization techniques, grocery shopping, restaurant eating and other tools for supporting your new eating habits. These are very short chapters that explain the basics but there is enough information for you to make positive change. There is one large section of frequently asked questions that is quite helpful and worth reading as it will answer many of the questions you probably will have after reading the book. Both section are very supportive when you are trying to incorporate the concepts into your life.
The end of the book has extensive 7 day meal plans for both meat eaters and vegetarians at each calorie level described in the book. They are helpful in trying to figure out what to eat in a typical week. It was quite interesting and helpful that the book includes information on a vegetarian DASH 7 day meal plan. Many people on the DASH diet are vegetarians and the original diet emphasizes a plant based eating pattern over eating meat.. Meat is really more like a side dish than a main meal and vegetarians can easy fit the diet into their lifestyle.
The last section consists of DASH recipes. The recipes are made with mostly whole foods and are quite healthy, but there are not that many of them. It would have been a good idea to add more recipes in place of all the meal plans as that would make it easier to incorporate the diet into someone's lifestyle. Since most people don't know how to cook, a simple recipe would help the reader put a meal together.
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